On Saturday afternoons when I was a kid I used to watch Million Dollar Movie on Channel 11 and was able to enjoy such science fiction classics as “Attack of the Crab Monsters” and “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.” Right away I figured out that really big creatures that had been exposed to atomic radiation really liked to attack. But as I became more sophisticated in my sci-fi viewing I eschewed such childish cinematic offerings in favor of more cerebral tales. No more ridiculous giant crab stories. I graduated to “Them” which is the realistic depiction of an attack by giant ants exposed to atomic radiation. In this classic of the fifties I learned that scientists were old and wore glasses and looked like Santa Claus (except for the girl scientists who were young and didn’t even look like Mrs. Claus and tended to end up with the FBI agent who starred in the film, who in this case was James Arness of Gunsmoke fame). And the best ones had British accents (or at worst New England accents). Also, no matter what their area of specialization (e.g., physics, botany or myrmecology) they were all equally adept at battling giant creatures exposed to atomic radiation. And they were full of esoteric and valuable information. I found out that the plural of antenna wasn’t antennas but rather antennae! This inspired in me a life-long love of the classical Greek and Latin languages. And the most important characteristic of scientists was their love of knowledge. Because of this thirst for knowledge, they were willing to venture into tunnels and basements where even the ubiquitous soldiers in their WWII vintage uniforms were afraid to go. It also meant the scientists were very likely to be munched on by the mutant du jour of the story. But you know, science. So that is how I came to admire scientists. They were cool and smart too. And they always, always, always figured out how to kill the monsters.

But one Saturday, Million Dollar Movie was playing another sci-fi film, “The Thing from Another World.” I was suspicious at first. If it was from another world how did it get here? Had it been exposed to atomic radiation? Would there be enough scientists? These doubts plagued me. But I decided to give it a whirl. Encouraging signs emerged quickly. The creature was indeed radioactive and there was a whole passel of scientists assigned to this movie. One of them even had a New England accent so things seemed to check out. And reassuringly the US military was available for monster eradication duty once the scientists had done the heavy lifting of analysis. Early on a problem arose. This creature was man shaped. He was bald and had strange hands with hypodermic finger nails. But he was no more than eight feet tall. This was highly irregular and seemed to throw into doubt his qualifications for his own movie. Also the scientists in this movie were extremely assertive and gave the military officers a lot of lip. And it seemed they didn’t know their primary function, figure out how to kill the monster. This was very confusing. The leader of the scientists kept saying that regardless of how many humans the creature killed, science demanded that no force should be used against it. He kept saying (in a really annoying intonation) that the creature “is wiser than we are” and that “it’s our duty to die to preserve the knowledge this creature possesses.” Even as a youngster I intuited that this head scientist was what we called back then “a loser.” How could this be? He was a scientist! He had the answers. I found this very puzzling and dispiriting. I searched for some reason for this failure on the scientist’s part to want to kill the monster. Eventually I developed an hypothesis based on a detailed comparison of “Them” and “The Thing from Another World.” At first glance nothing jumped out. But once I checked the cast members it all became clear. As mentioned above, in “Them” the part of the FBI Agent and eventual boyfriend of the scientist’s daughter is played by James Arness of “Gunsmoke” fame. It turned out that the part of the Thing was played by none other than James Arness! Well obviously if Arness was the prospective son-in-law of one scientist, then it stood to reason that a fellow scientist would not turn on him. What was at work here was the kind of professional courtesy that, for instance, police confer on each other’s family members. Now it made perfect sense. Crisis averted. I could become a scientist without becoming a loser. But I was troubled by all that talk of monsters being wiser than us. And not killing them but instead letting them kill us. It was very strange.

Fast forward forty years. I work as an engineer. I am surrounded by R&D PhDs. They all look and sound like the head scientist in “The Thing from Another World.” They drive Priuses and have Tolerance and Coexist, Bernie and Free Tibet bumper stickers on their cars. And suddenly it all makes sense.